Thanks for the prompt reply. I should have mentioned that I am hoping to
track changes, and do not want to have 1234-5 show up as a change if it is
already correct. I could go back and reject changes in that case, but it is
simpler at this point to just search for 1234, replace with 1234-5, and skip
over any that are already correct.

"Beth Melton" wrote:

If the document already has Form 1234-5 in some areas then find it
first and replace with Form 1234. Then you will have a consistent
search string and you can then Find: Form 1234 and Replace with: Form
1234-5.

No parenthesis or extra characters should be necessary.

--
Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/


"BruceM" wrote in message
news
Our company documentation refers to Form 1234. It should have been
Form
1234-5, but that has not been consistent. I would like to use Find
and
Replace to fix it, but I cannot get Replace to work. This is what I
have
tried (with several variations)using wildcards:
Find (1234)([!\-])
Replace with \1^~5\2

I have also tried Find (1234)([!\-]), and have left out the
parentheses
around 1234 (Replace with 1234^~5\1 in that case), and every other
variant I
can think of, but no luck. The idea is that I am looking for "1234"
followed
by something other than a hyphen, and replacing it with "1234-5"
(with a
nonbreaking hyphen) followed by whatever followed originally. I
specify
something other than a hyphen because in a few cases it is written
correctly
as "1234-5". I used \- because it seemed to be necessary if it was
to find
the literal hyphen character. If the text is "(Form 1234)" it is
supposed to
replace it with "(Form 1234-5)". Note that the parentheses are part
of what
I have found in my document, but the quotes are for purposes of this
question
only. What it does instead is find "(Form 1234)", but then replace
it with
"(Form 1234)-5". It does the same with a space after "1234", and I
end up
with "1234 -5". Can this be made to work, or is the hyphen or some
other
special character going to mess this up?